Michael O'Connor won't be at this year's Oscars ceremony, where he's nominated in the Best Costume category for his work on The Invisible Woman. He's too busy working on his next project in the UK, Tulip Fever, to be able to make the journey to Los Angeles. Perhaps surprisingly, he won't even be watching it on TV.

"It's one of those things - you're not in control, but you're flattered and honoured to be nominated and that's great in itself," he says graciously. "I have been there twice before so I know how it plays out!"

One of the two occasions he has attended saw him win a little golden statue for his work on 2009 film The Duchess, so if he does win on March 2 he'll have a rather prestigious pair of bookends.

This nomination, his third, does feel different though. "There's a difference because I think the nomination is easy to come by - which you don't realise the first time it happens because you don't understand quite what it's all about," he comments.

The Invisible Woman, based on Claire Tomalin's book of the same name, tells the story of Charles Dickens and his mistress Nelly Ternan, a poor actress more than half his age with whom he had a secretive, marriage-ending relationship in his later years. The big screen adaptation was directed by Ralph Fiennes, who also fulfils the role of Dickens.

Fiennes was involved with all aspects of film's wardrobe, says O'Connor, and accompanied the designer on trips to the Victoria & Albert Museum as part of the research process.

"Ralph was quite clear that we should embrace the time, and I think that if you do that it gives you a sense that you're really there," he says.

Nelly, played by Felicity Jones, with Charles Dickens, played by Ralph Fiennes. Photo: Rex

Embracing the time meant research was key. Very few photographs exist of Dickens in the 1850s, the decade in which he met Nelly and much of the film is set, so O'Connor turned to both Tomalin's and Peter Ackroyd's biographies of the writer as well as studying diary entries in which people describe meeting Dickens and what he was wearing.

"When Dickens was young, like [Benjamin] Disraeli at the time, in the late 1820s, 1830s, he would have been considered a dandy," explains O'Connor. "If you study photographs of him right through his life, he's very much posing in them and he loves clothes, there's no secret about it; people would bump into him and write in their diary 'I saw Dickens on the Strand' and describe his clothes, his cane, everything."

By combining those vivid early descriptions with photographs of Dickens in the 1860s, of which there are many more, O'Connor was able to transpose his earlier and later tastes in clothing to the imagine what he would have worn in 1850s.

When it came to protagonist Nelly, played by Felicity Jones, he had to follow a similar tract. Again, there were many pictures of her in the 1860s, thanks to the invention and popularity of the carte de visite. But by this time - years into her affair with wealthy Dickens - Nelly would have been notably grander in her attire than she was when she met him in the previous decade as a struggling 18-year-old actress. So, O'Connor referred to Dickens's own novels to provide an insight into her image as a younger woman.

Felicity Jones as Nelly in the pale green dress. Photo: Rex

"In Dickens's novels he quite clearly describes young girls. If you look at David Copperfield or Little Dorrit for example, you see the way he idealises young girls and they're very, very frail and fragile and in pastel and pale colours," he notes.

Additionally, Jones didn't want Nelly to be an "overtly pretty, attractive" girl to Dickens, says O'Connor. "She wanted to be one of his simple girls, an ordinary girl in the background so that's the way we started it off."

This meant making Nelly's clothing echo the slow-burn of Dickens falling in love with her. "At the beginning, I put her in pale grey so she didn't stand out and so her two sisters are the prettier and the more talented girls… then I put her in pale green for the evening and put a red geranium in her hair, as I knew that was Dickens's favourite flower."

Nelly with the red geranium in her hair. Photo: Rex

Nelly's emotional journey, the pulsing vein that runs through the film, continues to be mimicked by her clothing throughout. "She slowly realises that this is the life she's going to have [as Dickens's mistress]. The colours become stronger, the shapes become more dramatic and she starts wearing jewellery, whereas when she's younger she doesn't wear those things, emphasising the poverty."

The film's period switch - from the 1850s and 60s to the 1880s - only acted to emphasise her poignant and painful personal passage further. "She's a school teacher, the headmaster's wife and in stronger, more dramatic colours," he says. "In the 1880s, it was a lot harder, you've got the bustle - as opposed to the crinoline - they were a very restrictive thing." Restrictive being the operate word as Nelly struggles with the memory of the relationship which, even after Dickens's death, remained a secret - even her husband did not know.

A number of the principle costumes - all for which were manufactured for the film - have now found a home at the Dickens House Museum in Broadstairs. "It's important for people to see that they've got a longer life than the film," says Michael, "and it also goes to show the enduring popularity of Charles Dickens." Something which may well be cemented further on Sunday night.